Mach3 and Small form factor PCs

[9fingers]

I am just starting out in planning a CNC conversion of a small mill.

I don't have a lot of space in the workshop and so I'm thinking of buying a 2nd hand Dell sx280 which is 3Ghz P4 based machine with serial and parallel ports and would appear to meet/exceed the processing requirements of Mach3.
Has anyone used this Ultra Small Form Factor machine with Mach3 ?

Spec :  http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opsx280/en/ug/specs.htm

My chief concern is that what ever the problem that Mach3 has with laptops (?) might also exist with these USFF PCs

Any help gratefully received.

TIA

Bob

[Hood]

It is normally the power saving features of Laptops that cause the issues and because Laptops are designed to run from batteries these are often very hard to disable completely.
I use Via Pico mobos in my lathe and one of my mills, they dont have parallel ports  but I use the SmoothStepper anyway so that doesnt concern me. I am also redoing the Bridgeport at the moment and I am using a micro ATX mobo. Although I am again using an external controller with this retrofit I did run the driver test at 100KHz to see what it was like and it is the smoothest I have ever seen on any computer at any frequency, so although I havent actually tried it with the parallel port I would be confident that it would be flawless.
The mobo is an Asus AT5NM10-I

Hood

[9fingers]

Sounds hopeful then Hood!

Thanks

Bob

[ERP]

I use an atom D525 based board which has a parallel port.
Works fine.

[rrc1962]

The GX270/280 has a known issue with blowing capacitors as well as motherboard problems.  I have a collection of them.  Never had a problem with the full size towers.